The Secret World of International Accountancy – the Scandal of the ‘Big Four’

The four major global accountancy firms – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG have developed into vast multinationals, showing multi-billion profits and paying huge salaries to their high-ranking staff. Their part in the 2008 financial crash effectively forgotten, they are now regarded as ‘too big to fail’, and ruthlessly exploit the financial system, encouraging tax avoidance, propping up anti-democratic movements, pushing sometimes damaging deregulation, and even infiltrating the machinery of state. By 2016, they employed 890,000 people across 150 countries, more than the five most valuable companies in the world combined. In their oldest markets, the UK and US, they are growing at over twice the rate of the countries’ economies, auditing 97% of the largest US companies, and all the UK’s top 100 corporations. Richard Brooks is an author, journalist and former tax inspector. He has twice won the Paul Foot award for campaigning journalism, and has worked closely with the BBC Panorama Team on several programmes. His new book Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and how they broke Capitalism examines the evolution and current practice of a profession that is no longer marked by financial probity, but has become an exploitative and damaging industry that reinvents global regulations for its own benefit. See article on Carillion scandal & Guardian Long Read 29 May 2018